A. Field of Invention
This invention generally relates to methods and apparatuses concerning booster seats and more specifically relates to methods and apparatuses concerning an automotive booster seat assembly that can accommodate multiple children.
B. Description of the Related Art
It is well known in the automotive industry to provide infant car seats to secure infants to passenger vehicles and to provide booster seats to secure children who are too big for infant car seats but are not big enough to sit in the vehicle seats without seating assistance. While known booster seats generally work well for their intended purposes, they create a problem when it is desirable to secure multiple children to a vehicle.
In order to secure multiple children to a vehicle, multiple individual booster seats are required. If multiple booster seats are placed into a single row, such as on a bench seat, a seat belt extender may be used to raise the height of the female receptacle to allow hand access so that each child may latch and unlatch the seat belt assembly themselves. The armrests on individual booster seats, however, consume valuable packaging space. FIG. 4 illustrates the problem—the width of the rear seats, especially in the third row of SUVs and vans, typically is not sufficient to accommodate more than two booster seats. As shown, the width W1 of the rear seats 4 is less than the width W2 of three individual booster seats 1, 2, 3.
Even if three individual booster seats can fit onto a seat row, the armrest structure does not provide the child with hand access to latch and unlatch the seat belt assembly themselves—especially when the seat belts have soft straps and are sunk relatively low down into the seat. As shown, the armrests 5, 6 block hand access to the female belt receptacles 7, 8.
As family sizes increase and traffic safety laws are revised to extend the length of time children are required to sit in booster seats, there is a need to provide for a single booster seat that can accommodate multiple children.